The present invention relates generally to the field of managing a fleet of remote assets. In one exemplary embodiment, the invention is described in the application of managing a fleet of mobile assets.
The management of a large fleet of remote assets, particularly when the fleet of assets comprises a fleet of mobile assets, such as a fleet of trucks, ships or railway locomotives, is a challenging logistical effort. There is continuing pressure for the owners and/or lessors, of such assets to improve the efficiency of operations of the assets to remain competitive in the market place. For example, railroads must manage their fleets of locomotives to maximize the on-train time in order to remain competitive with alternative modes of transportation. The assignee of the present invention is a supplier of locomotive engines and has developed numerous design features and services to maximize the efficiency of operation of its locomotives. The assignee of the present invention has also undertaken to provide integrated maintenance services to the owners and/or lessors of automotive assets. Such services may include managing fleet-related data among a plurality of maintenance service centers that supply necessary parts and labor. The coordination of the servicing of a large fleet of mobile assets and the communication with the various parties involved in such efforts are monumental tasks.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,272 dated Dec. 1, 1998, commonly owned with the present invention, describes a system and method for diagnosing failures in a locomotive. While such a system and method has proven beneficial, further improvements in fleet management are desired.
Additionally, operations of mobile assets such as commercial trucks, fleets of leased cars and even private vehicles are generally burdened by overspending on maintenance both in direct costs and in lost productivity of the assets due to unduly conservative maintenance schedules. Such schedules may generally represent the extreme asymmetry in effective cost of planned versus unplanned down time of the mobile assets. Thus, reliable and inexpensive data management services targeted at such assets, and, more specifically, to their operators is desirable. Dynamically and personalized timely delivery of information to operators of the remote assets presents a substantial opportunity for productivity enhancement of the assets, operators and financial investment of the service providers. Location information, as may be available through various navigation systems, such as a Global Positioning System (GPS) and other transponder-based systems, has yet to be leveraged in a systematic manner which enables cost-effective logistics planning, maintenance planning and targeted marketing. Various features available onboard the remote assets have not yet been fully exploited for usage profiling, planning, diagnostics, prognostics or subsystem optimization in the mobile assets. Examples of such features include computerized control of various subsystems used for operation of the remote assets, e.g., propulsion subsystem, climate control, engine, etc., local storage of fault codes and buffering, and storage and data reduction of analog or digital data that such subsystems automatically generate during their operation. The proposed system and techniques of the present invention are believed to appropriately address the foregoing shortcomings of presently implemented practices.